Washington DC

Review: ‘The Canterville Ghost’ at The Montgomery Playhouse

Just as you are taking down your Labor Day bunting and searching for last year’s fall decorations, there arrives a bit of spooky mystery and merriment for the whole family to enjoy. The Montgomery...

Review: ‘Any Given Monday’ at Dominion Stage

Moral dilemmas feed the dark humor of Bruce Graham’s Any Given Monday, directed by Jennifer Lyman. Marital infidelity, the loyalty of friendship, the eagerness of youth, and the logic of no logic at...

Magic Time!: Refinding the Soul of ‘Word Becomes Flesh’ at Theater Alliance: A Q&A With Director Psalmayene 24

Winner of five Helen Hayes Awards last season, Theater Alliance’s production of Word Becomes Flesh is now playing at Anacostia Playhouse in an encore presentation that is garnering even more acclaim....

Theater Alliance Launches Word Becomes Action Festival

By Natalie Graves Tucker The theater that brought you the Helen Hayes Award–winning show Word Becomes Flesh last year is walking the talk and following up with the Word Becomes Action Festival. Before...

Review: ‘The Arsonists’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Woolly Mammoth’s The Arsonists is not so much an entertainment, even though I laughed frequently, psychotically–and loud, as it is a paratheatrical event during which an absurd play is presented. The...

News: Two Years After Launching Mosaic, Ari Roth Reflects

This piece, “Two Years After Launching Mosaic, Ari Roth Reflects” by Marilyn Millstone was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on September 12,...

Review: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ at the Little Theatre of Alexandria

It’s rare that a play allows for a more distanced view than that of its cinematic counterpart, but in the case of the Little Theatre of Alexandria’s production of Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry’s...

News: ‘Olityelwe (The Forgotten)’ Returns to DC in Full Production for Two Performances Only at Theater Alliance

I reported on this extraordinary play when it was a staged reading at Theater J last June and said at the end: “Somebody needs to pick this one up and bring it back.” Well, that’s exactly what Theater...

Review: ‘Word Becomes Flesh’ at Theater Alliance at Anacostia Playhouse

The Word, in spiritual parlance, is the creative power of God made audible and visible through His Son. It is the energy of the divine dynamic made manifest through Self-revelation. True to principle,...

Review: ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with a book by Lawrence Kasha and David Landay, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and music by Gene de Paul, including new...

Spine: What’s Left of America’s Makers, ‘Skeleton Crew’ at Studio Theatre

Lord, in a bourgeois town It’s a bourgeois town I got the bourgeois blues Gonna spread the news all around Any Washington theatregoer who craves a working class show, where the characters are...

Magic Time!: ‘Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train’ at 1st Stage

There are times in the theater when the particulars of a play—its people, place, and poetics—pull you in as only an arresting, well-told story can. But then something even more interesting begins to...

Review: ‘Aida’ at Washington National Opera

Eternal, romantic love conquers all — even a jealous rival — in Verdi’s ravishingly melodic Aida, now being presented by the Washington National Opera with splendid work from all involved. Verdi’s...

Review: ‘In Cabaret We Trust’ by TBD Immersive at Blind Whino

Tradition Be Damned Immersive has taken over a desanctified church at 700 Delaware Street, SW, Washington, DC. Known as the Blind Whino, or better by the fanciful colors that electrify the church’s...

Review: ‘Skeleton Crew’ at Studio Theatre

Even before the houselights go dim, sparks fly. That vision — of fire blazing from a riveter’s gun in a factory in Detroit — is emblematic of what is to come in Skeleton Crew, Dominique Morrisseau’s...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at NextStop Theatre Company

What a combustible evening at NextStop’s production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. Under Thembi Duncan’s adroit direction and with fascinating casting, this in-your-face drama...

Review: ‘Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train’ at 1st Stage

Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, now in production at 1st Stage, opens while the audience is still finding their seats. On a raised platform, in the round, Angel Cruz (Luis Alberto...

2017 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘GATZ’ at The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre

The program for GATZ claims that it is “A parody based on ‘The Great Gatsby’ Written by F. Scot. Fitzgerald.” (Note that Fitzgerald’s middle name is misspelled.) But a parody is, by definition, a...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Workhouse Arts Center

Everybody loves a winner. The song “Maybe This Time” reminds one of the spark of hope in a new beginning, what it feels like to cross a path and find someone and find a home. How very simple and very...

Review: ‘Aglaonike’s Tiger’ at Venus Theatre

Aglaonike’s Tiger, written by Claudia Barnett and directed by Deborah Randall, is playing now at the Venus Theatre in Laurel, MD. The drama is based on the first recorded woman astronomer of Ancient...

Review: ‘The Heidi Chronicles’ at Rep Stage

Even successful plays get retired from the workforce after a few seasons. A select few, however, may go on to a new phase of wizened seniority. That is the case with The Heidi Chronicles, now getting...

Review: ‘In the Heights’ at Olney Theatre Center (in a co-production with Round House Theatre)

In a week that began with the repeal of DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – what better way to end it than with a musical about dreamers. For those children – many now young adults, among...

Review: ‘An Inspector Calls’ at the Laurel Mill Playhouse

An Inspector Calls, by J.B. Priestly, is currently playing at Laurel Mill Playhouse, produced by Maureen Rogers and directed by Ilene Chalmers. Priestly was from the working class, albeit white...

Review: ‘Don Juan Tenorio’ at GALA Theatre

While Don Juan, the character, is a recognizable archetype of insatiable lust, the GALA Theatre’s Don Juan Tenorio, is an elegant, at times humorous, meditation on the psychic toll abject narcissism...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: Six Short Plays from Playwrights Collaborative

Some of the most interesting new plays unveiled at this year’s Page-to-Stage Festival–held over the Labor Day weekend at the Kennedy Center–were among those offered by Playwrights Collaborative, a...

Review: ‘Midnight Cigarette’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Onto a landscape of food stamps, broken dreams, and Walmarts, director and playwright William Dean Leary has created an indelible portrait of life in rural America. Leary’s Midnight Cigarette, now in...

In the Moment: ‘Iola’s Letter: The Memphis Crusade of Ida B. Wells’ at Hill Center

So here we are in late 2017. And in the past several months, nooses have appeared in the Washington DC area, on the campus of American University, at the University of Maryland, inside the National...

Review: ‘Neverwhere’ at Rorschach Theatre

In 1582, a village parson heard the deathbed confession of a man named Richard Barley, who had married his butter churn. Barley claimed he had been bewitched into matrimony by a fairy called Apron Jon...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: ‘Blind Spots’ by Brave Soul Collective

Skipping puddles on my way to The Kennedy Center, I reminisced: “It’s a rainy day. The sky is gray. I think I’ll smile anyway.” My childhood friend, Nancy, taught me that and it has stuck with me for...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: ‘Queens Girl in Africa’ at Mosaic Theater

Any doubts about the future of the American Theatre were put firmly to rest on Labor Day Weekend, when more than 60 DC-area companies presented excerpts from some of their newest plays at The Kennedy...

Interview: Nicole Atkins on Performing at The Hamilton on September 12, 2017

“It was just so fun,” Nicole Atkins says about the recording process for Good Night Rhonda Lee, her fourth studio album. “We recorded it live, and everything was really in the present moment,...

Review: ‘Julius Caesar’ at Scena Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center

Diamond Julesy Gets It Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has recently become a cause célèbre. When Caesar was portrayed in a Public Theater production with a Trump-like costume and wig, there were protests....

Spine: Bessie Smith and ‘The Devil’s Music’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Fresh from World War I and a devastated Europe, The Roaring Twenties indeed roared across America. In the midst of a raging economic boom fueled in no small part by the advent of film and radio,...

Preview: Women Playwrights Set to Take Page-to-Stage by Storm

Want to see some really cool plays with women at the helm of the production? We’ve got great news for you! Women playwrights and women-led theater companies are ready to entertain you at the Kennedy...

Review: ‘The Devil’s Music’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

It’s no coincidence that The Devil’s Music – the show that celebrates the life and song of Bessie Smith – blew into Washington’s bustling H Street district at roughly the same time that Hurricane...

Magic Time!: ‘The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith’ at Mosaic Theater Company

In what is surely the most badass, take-no-prisoners performance by a musical artist on a DC stage in recent memory, Miche Braden brings her sensational star turn as Bessie Smith to H Street, belting...

Review: Silver Spring Stage 2017 One Act Festival, Weekend Three

One-act plays are tricky beasts. Playwrights must balance tension with plot and story. Too little tension, and the audience is left bored, slogging through countably interminable minutes until the...

In the Moment: ‘A Little Night Music’ at Signature Theatre

Opening in 1973, A Little Night Music was part of the muscular turbulence of those well-remembered primal days of rage. Rage that bred inhaled cynicism like a needed eye-opening drug into the arts for...

Review: ‘A Little Night Music’ at Signature Theatre

If you are eager to get away from the turbulent news cycle, August humidity, annoying traffic, a mostly undone to-do list, disorder in your immediate circle, or fractures at a global or microscopic...

Review: ‘The Wizard of Hip’ at MetroStage

Yesterday may be far away for some; but a high-spirited comic primer of one male’s vainglorious attempts to be “hip” and his bewilderment at all things relating to women awaits from the exuberant,...

Review: The American Pops Orchestra Presents ‘Season 3 Opening Celebration! With Marilyn Maye’ at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater

Luke Frazier, American Pops Orchestra founder and Music Director, kicked off the Orchestra’s third season with a delightful concert featuring acclaimed jazz legend, Marilyn Maye. Maye was backed by a...

Here are the 2017 Barrymore Awards Nominations

The nominations for the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre for the 2016-17 season have been announced by Theatre Philadelphia. A total of 23 companies were recognized across 27 categories. 22...

Review: ‘Azul’ at La Fábrica Theater

Did you ever wonder why Picasso chose to paint in blue? The earliest stage of his famous career is known as his Blue Period, and this new play by Tanaquil Márquez shows how and why he made that...

Review: Silver Spring Stage 2017 One Act Festival, Weekend Two

Silver Spring Stage kicks off its fiftieth season with a festival of one-act plays showcasing homegrown writing and acting talent and the can-do spirit of the best of local theater. Though no stated...

Review: Free For All ‘Othello’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Every great play by Shakespeare takes on altered shades of meanings depending on a production’s directing, design, and acting. That’s a theater truism. Also well-known to practitioners is that...

Review: ‘Whipping, or The Football Hamlet’ at Longacre Lea

What a rush. DC area playwright Kathleen Akerley has aced her way through the hottest of “au courant” identity politics in her newest work, the penetrating Whipping, or the Football Hamlet. With...

Review: ‘The Nerd’ at Prince George’s Little Theatre at the Bowie Playhouse

Now in its 58th season, The Nerd is Prince George’s Little Theatre’s 192nd production. Scripted by Larry Shue, the zany comedy is directed by John Degnan, a long-time area director and retired NASA...

Review: Silver Spring Stage 2017 One Act Festival

Silver Spring Stage opened its 2017 One-Act Festival which has been part of their season for fifty years. Each weekend several short plays from the past and present are produced. There is usually no...

Review: ‘Bastianello’ and ‘The Juniper Tree’ at The Barns at Wolf Trap

It is not often that a program offers heartfelt imagery that is brilliantly optimistic, and also brings in dark, often sad scenarios. That is the beauty of traditional fairy and folk tales, that there...

Interview: Montana DeBor, Mark Harding, Gwynne Flanagan Cox, and Elise “Teddy” Sipos from Sweet Spot Aerial Production’s ‘Smoky Mirrors’

“My faith is a great weight hung on a small wire.” – Anne Sexton Each performer in Sweet Spot Aerial’s Smoky Mirrors places great faith in materials: fabric, rope, chains, muscle. There’s also a...